


Aang

by Nifflers_and_Crookshanks



Series: Children of the Wind [1]
Category: Avatar: The Last Airbender
Genre: Air Nomads (Avatar), Eastern Air Temple, Festival, Gen, Legends, Monks, Mother-Son Relationship, Nuns, Yangchen's Festival, southern air temple
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-11-23
Updated: 2019-11-23
Packaged: 2021-01-27 04:24:04
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,023
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21386050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Nifflers_and_Crookshanks/pseuds/Nifflers_and_Crookshanks
Summary: An air nun attends the last ever celebration of Yangchen's Festival.
Series: Children of the Wind [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1552294
Comments: 22
Kudos: 85





	Aang

_1,959 HA, New Era or 0 BG – Yangchen’s Meadow, Western Earth Kingdom _

The wind caresses her skin, brushing dark locks away from slight wrinkles, and the air nun breathes in the free air about her. On the cliffs the salt of the sea is carried in the breeze and interweaves itself with the sweet, soft aroma of meadow flowers. High above, the cranefish soar, their longing calls echoing in ocean and sky. Ahead of her, High Sister Lhamo concludes her fourth bow and the nun steps forward, shoulder to shoulder with her fellow sisters, offering the great statue the bundle of woven cloth and parchment she holds aloft.

Beneath the benevolent gaze of Lady Tienhai, Sonam cannot help but to feel empty, to feel old. How long has it been, she wonders, since she last made her bows with a light heart? Twenty years, perhaps, and perhaps longer. Then she’s stepping to the side, her sisters at her side, and turning to watch the rest of the nuns bow before the spirit. Before she became part of the Western temple’s council of elders, she was one of them, and could live as she pleased. Now, she can only watch.

The salt air carries the music of flutes and drums, horns and bells, as the High Sister leads the procession down the hill to the meadow. The monks from the Southern Air Temple are already there, waiting, with merry laughs and dancing feet. It won’t be long before their Eastern sisters and Northern brothers join them, but that is not the thought that sets her heart beating.

Sonam’s eyes search the crowd, roaming over shaven heads, happy faces and blue arrows once, then twice, with no sign of him in sight. Not a few times her breath catches when she spies a short monk or young master, but none are who she seeks. Too old, too young, tattoo-less or bearded. Though, cynically, she reminds herself she would not know him even if he were here.

It does not take long to set the few gifts they bring aside, to lay out the vegetables, fruits, rice and tofu on ritual platters until their meal awaits and then she is moving across the meadow, ignoring the curious looks her lone profile gains.

The wind is stronger by the cliffs, wilder and freer as it swirls about in currents just as fierce as the ocean below’s. She lets it tug at her hair, her robes, small fists clutching at her. It’s the South wind, brought across desserts, rivers, mountains and oceans to call to her and her alone. Sonam looks to it’s origin across the water, between distant mountains, and remembers the man who first showed it to her.

“Home,” He had said, finger pointing straight to the South.

“Our only home is the sky,” She’d answered, the devout nun she was.

It took her years to understand his meaning, to know that home was not some foreign concept her culture had estranged themselves from but a living, breathing thing buried deep within your heart.

“He won’t come,” Sister Nyima’s voice surprises her, soft tones carried to her ear by the breeze.

Sonam turns to see her, to see the concern on her friend’s face and nods. She knows she’s right. He won’t come. Not this year, not for many years. The Southern council of elders will never permit it.

“The Northern monks have arrived. They say they saw the Eastern sisters’ bison not far behind and High Sister Lhamo will want our help with the gifts,”

Sonam sighs, casting one more look to the South before re-joining her companions. 

It is only when all four high elders are gathered and her superior is waving her over, her hands holding the bundles tightly, that she sees him. He stands beside his colleagues from the other elders councils, unknowing of the pain and fury that years of meditation have allowed her to reduce to cool resentment.

She recognises him instantly. Likely saw him before, scanning the crowd of Southern monks and never even knew it. Now, however, with the loss weighing heavy in her chest he is all she can see.

_How is he?_ She wants to say. _When will he come?_

Sonam merely presents the gifts she holds, bowing low.

“High Sister Yangtso,” Nyima says politely and the old nun smiles, accepting the bundle.

“High Monk Tsomo,” Dolma adds, offering her own blessed cargo. Their Northern brother nods sagely as he takes it.

Sonam’s breath shudders, but her words are clear.

“High Monk Pasang,”

Monk Tashi had led the Southern delegation last year and the year before, was it too much to hope that she would find a friendly face in Gyatso this day? The wise one wrote her letters on occasion, informing her on his pupil’s recent improvements.

The high elder only grunts his acknowledgement and Sonam does not imagine the gruff way in which he seizes the parcel.

With all present and the traditional offerings exchanged, the feast commences and friends move to one another, the laughter of merry reunions filling the summer breeze.

“I wasn’t sure you would come this year,” A familiar voice says and an arm wraps around her.

“Mother,” Sonam breathes, finding Sister Iio’s grey eyes full of warmth. “The Western Air Temple is leading the ritual this year, I could not miss it,”

She is one of three sisters in the order below the High Nun, all of whom were expected to attend to their superior on Yangchen’s Festival. There was no chance of her missing it, even if High Sister Lhamo had considered Bansi for the role.

“Even without your duties, you always come,”

“Of course, it is an important celebration,”

Sister Iio’s skin wrinkles as her eyes narrow.

“You do not come for Jayu?”

“He has not come for many years. You know that is not who I wait for,”

Jayu had only attended the festival two times. Once when he met her and once with their son. He will never come again, not if he can trap himself away in the Northern temple’s expansive archives, writing out sacred scriptures until his eyes fade. Sonam knows not to wait for him.

“He came to the Eastern Air Temple a few years ago. All the novice monks came to meet their bison,”

“He has a bison?”

She thinks of the day she met Umma, the chubbiest calf of the lot and so fluffy she could bury her head in her fur even when she was no bigger than a baby.

_What type of companion had he chosen? How had they first interacted? Did it trust him immediately or take time to adjust? _

“Yes,” Her mother smiles and Sonam imagines she hears some pride in her voice, “He chose well,”

“I heard he has his tattoos already,” The words come rushed, a well-kept secret she cannot believe she shares, “He’s the youngest master in history,”

“All thirty six levels in twelve years,”

“Thirty five,” As though there is much difference, “He created a new technique. He calls it the air scooter, apparently,”

“Gyatso writes to you, I see,”

“He’s a good man,”

The only mother an air nomad knows is the nation, the only father an air nomad knows is the nation. Sonam knows this, was raised on it. She was raised in the Western Air Temple, because that was where she wished to go, and only saw her mother on days such as this.

But she still knew her.

Her child would never call her mother again, stolen away when he was just four years old.

She had not wanted him to go to the Southern Air Temple. Her father was from the North, it was always the North she thought of when she thought on his future, but Jayu was born and raised there and she could not argue it.

“Four years old?” Gyatso had murmured, wondering. “When was he born?”

“Sometime in the autumn,” She’d answered.

“The autumn,”

“It was not long before the equinox fast,” She remembered.

Air Nomads didn’t generally make a point to recall the day they were born, there were too many more important milestones in a child’s life to consider, but Sonam had decided against the fast while she fed a child from her breast.

Sonam does not, however, remember that the great earthquake was a mere day beforehand, that even as she laboured in the stupa the sky had turned black with ash.

“Don’t worry,” Jayu whispered to her, laying a kiss to her sweaty brow, “It’s far to the West, in the Fire Nation most like,”

The earth had roared, but high in the mountains all she had cared for was her child’s cry.

“We wish to carry out a test,” Monk Tashi informed them without a moment’s hesitation.

Within an hour the hall was set up, thousands of toys laid in neat rows across the floor. Sonam led her son, hand in hand down aisles and aisles. He chose four, four little toys for each year of his life. A spinning glider, not unlike the kind she would play with as a girl. Later, she would learn that it was a relic of Avatar Yangchen. Next was a soft turtle toy, Avatar Kuruk’s favoured stuffed animal. A wooden saber-tooth moose lion, with mechanical joints, was the last of Avatar Kyoshi’s possessions outside of her island home. Finally, her little boy picked up a handheld toy drum and Gyatso’s eyes welled with tears.

That was eight years ago. Sonam had not seen her son since.

“Perhaps in time they will permit Jayu to return to the South. He may be able to convince the elders in time,”

“I doubt it,”

Jayu, who had intended to resume his position as monk in the Southern Air Temple after years of a nomadic life, was swiftly hurried away to the North. They could not risk having anyone who knew the boy’s identity near him, lest they unintentionally reveal it. Only the council of elders could guide him. Sonam, she is not even permitted a letter, let alone an occasional visit. 

“When I was pregnant with him, High Sister Lhamo promised that I would give birth to a powerful bender,”

“How prophetic,”

They are apart from the others now, two nuns beneath the trees sharing a meal of fruit and speaking in quiet voices.

“I was unsurprised, at the time. Both Jayu and I spent our entire lives in the temples, studious and devote. Our spirits were always inclined to bending, but I never imagined anything like this,”

“He may not know you, Sonam, but he will make you proud,”

She is proud. Already she is so overwhelmingly proud of her little boy. The son Gyatso conjured for her on ink and paper was joyous and loving, so full of hope and laughter. Always playful, always caring. A bending protégé, a master at twelve, making new forms with his own hands. She is proud of him, avatar or not.

“I know he will,” She answers, “He’ll make our people proud,”

Through misty eyes she sees the world, rising from her seat beside her mother to turn to the cliffs. Beneath Lady Tienhai watchful gaze she looks to the South once more and Sister Iio joins her.

“Avatar Yangchen was one of the greatest avatars ever to live,” She tells her, “Across the Earth Kingdom she has been revered, worshipped even. We meditate on her, pray to her. Across the world, all four nations invoke her name above all others. I remember Avatar Roku well from when trained with Gyatso in the South. He was wise, disciplined, merciful,”

“And now he is incarnated as my son,”

“Roku was a great man, but in time he will be forgotten. Your son, child, he will be remembered until the earth is wrought asunder and all that we are is consumed by the ocean,”

The tears that welled in Sonam’s eyes fall now as she looks to the horizon.

“Aang,” She breathes. A blessing and a prayer.

The next year, no one comes to visit Lady Tienhai.


End file.
